Robotics Roundup

There's been an abundance of news lately, and we've missed a few things.
The man in
the picture above,
Wolfgang Heller, is shown with a projection taken from his
Global Robotics Brain Project
which tracks all manner of robotics-related news,
resulting in
gigantic mindmap of a broad range of robotics resources.High resolution 3D printing is here, at least
for DIYers.
A modular, reconfigurable
robot, called iMobot, takes plug and play to a whole
new level.
DARPA's
Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) program
seeks to
create a significantly improved scientific framework for the rapid design and
fabrication of robot systems and greatly enhance robot mobility and manipulation in
natural environments
and
significantly improve robot capabilities through fundamentally new approaches to
the engineering of better design tools, fabrication methods, and control
algorithms.iRobot
recently introduced it's model 110, FirstLook,
a surveillance device designed to be thrown.
In
a YouTube video that's passed 200,000
views
Dr. James Porter, medical director of robotic
surgery at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle,
uses the da Vinci surgical robot to fold a
paper airplane that's smaller than a penny,
demonstrating how this device provides surgeons
with improved precision and dexterity.